Jamie Foxx bashes Will Smith and #OscarsSoWhite: ‘Act Better’
Jamie Foxx asked “what’s the big deal” with the Oscars boycott while speaking at the American Black Film Festival Awards on Sunday. Foxx said he’s “not really” mad that the Oscar acting nominees are all white for a second year in a row.
In fact, Foxx said he called Denzel Washington about the Oscars Boycott and instead of complaining or boycotting the event, Jamie said “we just Instagramed our Oscars together.”
A photo posted by Jamie Foxx (@iamjamiefoxx) on
Hen then went on to poke fun at Will Smith’s Nigerian accent in the movie Concussion before yelling out #ActBetter. Jamie Foxx then bashed the #OscarsSoWhite movement saying:
“I was with Sidney Poitier just a couple weeks ago, and in 1963 all he asked for was an opportunity to act.” That’s all we have to do, opportunity. If you turn the camera on and say “OK . . . win an award . . . and action,” we’ll all have taken, like, 10 steps back. It’s all about the art. Who cares about anything else?”
Jamie Foxx won an Oscar, Golden Globe and Screen Actor’s Guild awards for best acting for his 2004 movie Ray.
Will Smith has never won a best acting role for any of the major acting award ceremonies, despite receiving nominations for Ali, The Pursuit of Happyness and Concussion.
This is not the first time Jamie Foxx and Will Smith didn’t see eye to eye. Several years ago, Quentin Tarantino first approached Will Smith to star in Django Unchained but, Smith turned down the movie role saying “It was about the creative direction of the story. To me, it’s as perfect a story as you could ever want: a guy that learns how to kill to retrieve his wife that has been taken as a slave. That idea is perfect. And it was just that Quentin and I couldn’t see [eye to eye],” Smith told The Hollywood Reporter. “I wanted to make that movie so badly, but I felt the only way was, it had to be a love story, not a vengeance story”
Jamie Foxx would later replace Will Smith.
